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Obamacare delay fallout

First more than 1,200 employers and health plans got waivers from early coverage rules. Next, many states that couldn’t decide whether to build a health insurance exchange or let the feds do it for them were given repeated extensions. And then, when Republican governors were holding out on expanding Medicaid, they were finally told there’s no deadline at all.

So when the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would delay the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate for employers for a year, it was just one more piece of evidence that the administration is perfectly willing to bend the rules for some powerful interests — a a welcome invitation for other players to raise their hands in the coming months as the law heads into overdrive.

Already, other groups are grumbling at the decision.

It’s not going over so well with hospitals, for example, who are worried that the delay means they won’t have as many newly insured patients as they’d expected.

On Wednesday, Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, said the delay is “troubling for those individuals who will not gain coverage through their employer. … We are concerned that the delay further erodes the coverage that was envisioned as part of the ACA.”

Hospitals have a vested interest in that coverage — because they’re facing a round of cuts in payments for the cost of treating uninsured patients. So they’re pushing for — you guessed it — a delay in those cuts.

And one of the Obama administration’s main labor allies — the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka — dropped a strong hint Wednesday that the unions want the same kind of attention that the businesses got. In a statement, he said the delay was “troubling” because it could weaken the incentive for large employers to keep offering health coverage.

“There are a number of areas in which we have asked that the ACA be interpreted to strengthen the delivery of benefits through employment-based plans. We hope the Administration will address these concerns just as they have the concerns voiced by employers,” Trumka said.

“What it shows is, this administration is pretty pro-business,” said Jay Angoff, the former head of the Department of Health and Human Services agency that’s implementing Obamacare. “The whole history of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act … shows that they’re very solicitous of business.”